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On January 26, 1931, nearly a full quarter-century after he passed through
the gates of Ellis Island, my paternal grandfather, Calogero Puleo, became
a United States citizen. The 48-year-old fruit dealer, married and the
father of ten children, was listed as five-feet, five-inches tall and weighing
145 pounds. His “race” was identified as Southern Italian. A
court officer had written “lacks education in English” in purple
ink across the Certificate of Citizenship. Two North End paesani,
Nicola Cesso, a street cleaner, and John Raso, another fruit peddler, served
as my grandfather’s witnesses, each swearing that they had known him
since 1920. This concluded the citizenship process that he had begun
with the filing of his Declaration of Intention in July of 1925, two months
after his tenth child, my father, was born.
In the
spring of that year, to mark the pride of the occasion, all twelve members
of the Puleo family posed for a photo in a studio on Little Prince Street;
my father, then six, clutched a small American flag and huddled close to my
grandfather, the new citizen.
Also that
spring, on May 19, my maternal grandparents, David and Rose Minichiello, celebrated
the birth of their second child, another daughter. My mother, Rosina,
or Rose, was born six weeks premature in the home her parents rented in Everett,
a small city near Boston. But my grandparents’ joy was short-lived
and quickly turned to heart-wrenching loss. My mother was a twin, born
first; her sister, named Christine after my grandmother’s mother, followed
shortly after, struggled for each breath once she arrived in the world, and
died less than twenty-four hours after her birth. My mother’s older
sister, Mary, then not yet three-years-old, remembered years later Christine’s
small white coffin that sat atop my grandmother’s sewing machine table
in the brief, but sorrowful, home wake that followed. Neither of my grandparents
spoke much of their daughter’s death in the years that followed. It
was yet another of life’s hardships to overcome and move beyond.
Angela
and Calogero Puleo and David Minichiello had cleared many other hurdles to
make America their home: leaving their beloved small towns in Italy, enduring
the misery of a transatlantic passage in steerage, suffering the pain of stereotyping
and discrimination, engaging in backbreaking labor, carving out a life in an
unfamiliar and crowded urban setting. Yet, they and thousands of other
Boston Italians also experienced the contentment of sharing their new life
with paesani, the warmth of the neighborhood enclave, the pride in
saving money, starting a business, or buying a home.
America was hard, but she offered something Italy never could – the
hope, perhaps even the promise, of a better future.
As 1931
drew to a close, the Puleos, the Minichiellos, and all Boston Italians would
find their faith in that promise severely tested. If they believed they
had survived all the hardships and cleared every hurdle America had placed
in their path, they were mistaken.
With little warning or time for preparation, Boston Italians and Americans
of all nationalities and geographic regions were about to come face to face
with the Great Depression.
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